Sam McCain - 04 - Save the Last Dance for Me (25 page)

“I never was able to get one of these things around anybody’s neck,” she said, again with great cold loony dispassion. “Maybe I’ll have

better luck with you.”

This time I didn’t try to come up out of my chair. I knew better. I had to be as still as I could be.

The rattle. The insane hissing.

Ella taking the snake and starting to wind it around my neck.

And then her mama fell face forward.

I’d been concentrating on Ella’s large body but she moved out of the way—trying to get the snake to coil better around my neck—and it was just then that Mama hit the floor. Heart attack?

I couldn’t think of anything that could fell a person so swiftly. I’d have said gunshot but there’d been no sound. Mama was just laid out on the floor.

The snake began to grip onto my neck.

Ella’s science project was going to be a success after all.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip through my bonds. I wanted to beg.

But I was too frightened to do any of those things.

And that was when the United States Cavalry, in the fetching form of Kylie, came through the rear door.

Moving fast. Picking up the gun Mama had dropped.

Breaking into a run down the aisle right up to the altar and saying, “Put the snake back in the cage, Ella.”

My heroine.

That same drugged dead response from Ella: “Be fun to try one of the serpents on a Jew.”

Kylie pushed the gun in Ella’s face.

“Put the snake away, Ella, and then stand over there with your hands in the air.”

“You can’t order me around. Only God can.”

The snake was still against my neck. I wasn’t moving.

“Do it, Ella.”

“You won’t shoot me.”

“You might be surprised.”

“You probably never shot a gun in your life.”

“You don’t want to take that chance, Ella.

Believe me.”

And then she did it.

Wasn’t it enough for my heroine to knock out Mama, grab the gun, and then rush the altar to confront the snake girl?

Not enough for Kylie.

She doubled-gripped the gun and fired it just to the side of Ella’s head, the violent noise forcing Ella to jerk away, taking the snake she held with her.

Ella sort of windmilled backward for several feet and then fell off the side of the platform. The snake went flying off into the darkness.

Kylie came over and started untying me.

“How’d you knock out Mama?” I said.

“Rock. A big one.”

“You saved my life.”

She gave me a kiss, as she continued to untie my ropes.

“Yeah,” she said, “and don’t you forget it.”

I’d never really been to a “d” before.

Picnics, I was used to. Family

reunions, I was used to. Even

union-sponsored hot dog-and-beer

Democratic rallies in the park, I was used to.

But a real “d” such as you saw in the fantasy pages of Playboy or Esquire, with

actual servants … all I could think of were the parties poor old Gatsby used to throw out on Long Island.

The Judge was wearing tennis whites and she looked damned good—tanned, trim, imperiously and regally beautiful. Not that she ever played tennis, you understand. Sweating, to her, was vulgar.

She just flitted around this golden glorious Midwestern afternoon—the temperature was in the high seventies and perfect—toting her glass of brandy and her Gauloise. A lot of her friends had come in from Chicago. You could tell they were big-city folks by the way they kissed each other on the cheek, the way movie stars do.

As for Milhous, well, the Secret

Service basically imprisoned him. Wherever he was, they were, surrounding him. Only an esteemed few were let inside that fortress of heavily-armed bodies.

Kylie kept trying to hide. She whispered that she didn’t have the right sort of clothes for an event like this, and didn’t speak well enough to be in such august company, and hoped we didn’t have to sit down and eat because she wasn’t up

on which fork and spoon to use at which point in the feast.

None of which mattered ultimately, anyway, because about five minutes before the feast was to be served on the long tables covered with starchy white tablecloths, the rain started.

And that was when I got my only really good look at Dick Nixon.

He was playing volleyball with a bunch of people.

Being summer, and being hot, and volleyball being a game that requires a lot of jumping and stretching, everybody but Dick was dressed in casual clothes, a lot of them, men as well as women, in walking shorts and golf shirts.

Not Nixon.

He was the only guy I’d ever seen play volleyball in a white dress shirt, necktie and wingtips. And I felt sorry for him. He didn’t seem to even sense how strange and sad he looked—laughable and pathetic —volleyball played in suit and wingtips. But then I’d always felt sorry for him, sensing that I was as odd in my way as he was in his.

I never did actually meet him but as we rushed in the downpour from the elegantly dressed lawn to our car, I felt pretty sure for the first time that John Kennedy was going to win the election.

Playing volleyball in wingtips.

Poor old Milhous. After this election, I was pretty sure we’d never hear another political peep from him again.

On the way home, rain slapping and slamming my ragtop, Kylie said, “I’m really sorry the lovemaking wasn’t so hot the other night.”

“It was my fault, not yours.”

“No, it was my fault. You’re just being nice.”

“C’mon, Kylie, it was just my Catholic guilt. Sleeping with a married woman. It inhibited me.”

“You don’t always have to be noble, McCain.”

“I don’t remember ever being noble.”

“Well, sometimes you’re sorta noble.”

“Sorta noble—and on rare, rare occasions—t I’d accept.”

“If I wasn’t so hung up with Jewish guilt—I’m still a married woman—I don’t think you would’ve been inhibited. It was up to me to free us both.”

I reached over and took her hand. “There’s only one thing to do.”

“What?”

“Try again.”

She smiled. And squeezed my hand. This was no kid-sister squeeze, either. “I think you’re right.”

“Try and try and try until we get it right.”

“How about if we get a pizza and then go to your place and just watch Tv for a while and kinda let things develop naturally.”

“Great idea. But I have to ask you something.

It’s sort of kinky.”

“Oh, God, McCain. I’m really not

kinky at all. That was one thing Chad hated about me. No kinks.”

“It’s just this dream I’ve always had.”

“This dream?”

“Well, this sexual fantasy, actually.”

I had her going. I could see she was expecting to hear something so funky she’d throw herself out of the moving car.

“I have always,” I said, “wanted to make love to a beautiful woman while I was wearing my wingtips.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to make love to a short, redheaded Irish guy while I was wearing my old Howdy Doody galoshes.”

“Talk about compatibility.”

“Yeah,” she said. And then slugged me on the arm. “You are a true dip-shit, McCain. You know that?”

“Gee,” I said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

The End